Saturday, April 12, 2014

Beijing Love Story - 北京愛情故事



Beijing Love Story (北京愛情故事) is an 2014 film out of Zhong Guo. The movie is an ensemble cast including Tony Leung, Carina Lau, Wang Xuebing, Yu Nan, Chen Sicheng, and Tong Liya. The movie is broken up into 5 different stories.

In Beijing, the party is going strong while some men pick up on some gals. A man falls for a gal and they hook up. Gal is preggers. In another story, married couple that has problems when the man goes out at night and sleeps around. Wife cracks cell phone to find his dirty deeds. Another story is of high school crush. Another story is of an aging couple madly in love dealing with death. Another couple with a kid try to rekindle their marriage with some roll playing.

All five story present a "LOVE" story of sorts. It seemed a big hit in Zhong Guo and Hong Kong as it cracked the top ten. Even in the US, the movie played for 6 weeks.

However, the movie was a major disappointment for me as the stories were trying present "love". It could be a culture thing as I noticed this in many drama series from Zhong Guo recently, the "love" they present seems more like a contract. Maybe its because I grew up in the states and that the "love" stories of wuxia lore are more inline with my Americanize Taiwanese upbringing. In the US, in the mainstream culture, only the old couple and high school couple would fall into the "love" category. But America's definition of love isn't keeping people married nor getting people to marry too. Marriage are down and divorces are up.

If you are a FOB, watch it. You might enjoy it. If you grew up in the US, I'd recommend you to pass.

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